Obama Campaign So Desperate They’re Willing to…Defend Bush?

Surprising, we know. But as President Obama and his administration desperately try to spin the narrative that he’s doing everything he can to reduce the pain at the pump, Americans just aren’t buying it. And why should they? Even if you believe the spin that oil production is at its highest in recent memory (which it is on private lands, but way down on federal lands), even if you agree there is no “silver bullet” to immediately lower gas prices, Americans know that there is more the President could do to signal to American’s he’s actually trying to reduce gas prices in the near future. Like, say, approving the Keystone pipeline?

Charles Krauthammer wrote a great article yesterday about other places we could drill and send the message to the world that the oil supply will be greatly increased:

●in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (more than half the size of England, the drilling footprint being the size of Dulles International Airport);

●on federal lands in the Rockies (where leases are down 70 percent since Obama took office).”

But of course, even though opening up these places might not produce a barrel of oil for a few years, the markets will be able to settle knowing that a more stable supply of oil is on its way. Also, a few years is much, much sooner than decades, which is how long it will take for wind and solar to be viable.

But we know that President Obama doesn’t care. How do we know this? He says he cares, he says he understands, even though we know he doesn’t pay for his own gas while being driven around in a 22-car motorcade. We know he doesn’t care because he and his Energy Secretary have said they want higher energy prices (so that alternative fuels look better by comparison).

Then-Senator Obama in 2008: “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can, it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s emitted.”

Steven Chu in 2008: “Somehow, we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”

This is what they said while the liberal media blamed former President George W. Bush for high gas prices and claiming his policies allowed the oil companies to profit from raising the price of gas. And in 2008, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi directly blamed President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for the high price of gasoline, saying that the Democrat plan of hiking taxes on the oil companies and spending taxpayer dollars on alternative energy somehow would have lowered the price of gas.

Now, of course, everything is different. President Obama’s plans for alternative fuels have been passed and have, predictably, failed to bring us any closer to a new miracle fuel that will replace oil. We can’t even imagine the rationale for tax hikes on oil companies somehow lowering fuel prices, but, you know…it’s liberal logic.

This brings us to today. Now, House Minority Leader Pelosi says President Obama is not to blame for high gas prices. And this morning, Brad Woodhouse, the communications director of the Democratic National Committee actually defended President Bush when it came to oil prices:

“There are so many things going on with respect to gas prices that are outside of the hands of this President’s hands and, frankly, they were outside of the hands of George Bush.”

So after three years of blaming Bush for everything, the administration is finding that they have to defend him in order to save themselves!

Mr. Woodhouse mentioned earlier in the segment that oil production is up and foreign oil imports are down. That is not a good argument to be making. The fact of the matter is: oil production on private lands is up, but demand in India and China has grown massively in recent years, there is far more global demand than there is supply. That means that supply must be increased, and how do we do that?

Exploration and domestic production, not taxing the oil companies and giving government handouts to politically connected companies that produce weak technologies that are more expensive and less efficient than oil. If these industries are truly the fuel of the future, then they need to prove that they can bring their price down and be more efficient than gasoline. We should not be trying to raise gas prices up to their level to make them more palatable.

Deputy Communications Director

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